Christmas

Blue Christmas: Hydrangea

On a Christmas break but things are still quite busy and am taking a quick break from a spot of work.

We had a family lunch on Christmas day which turned out to be a lot of fun. My little niece was of course at the centre of it all and it turned out to be a water filled event, she in her little pool, we under the sprinkler bought for her.  As a gift, I made her a book called A Short History of D_ Up Until Now which integrated her Dad's pictures of her and my text.  It was immensely enjoyable making it and looking at all the ways in which she's grown.  The niece is probably going to be an editor, she carefully absorbed the contents of the book and laughed a lot but also pointed out the errors in the text (my toy house is green, yellow and red and not green, yellow, red and blue!).

Later she curled up in my lap and lay for awhile. She often does this, in these moments she is like a small, warm animal enjoying being held and stroked. When I think of her it is always associated with the feeling of her in my arms.

After the heat of Christmas, its been wet and today when I came into the city the rain was beating down. The Christmas trees around the city look slightly ghostly yet twinkling in the mist. But there are people in the city and from my window I can see that the boats are out in the harbour.  I think I have been in Sydney over every Christmas break and I like the city at this time, emptied of the daily commuters and festive and relaxed.

Old Times. New Times.

Work is very busy. Plus the little bit of time I have has been spent on late night hanging around news sites thanks to wikileaks ☺ But I don’t blog on work or politics so I will turn my thoughts briefly to music I recently blogged about. Partly because its been my background soundtrack for the past few weeks. Most of this has been a fair few rousing Decemberists songs. And can I say that if was 25 I might have entertained the thought of having a wee crush on its lead singer, Colin Meloy?!

Quite a few Decemberists songs are like old timey stuff made fresh. Like someone rummaged through old ballads, sea shanties, agricultural work songs and the like and made up whole new tales. Plus they love songs of doomed love. There is a degree of artifice and hyperliterateness about the lyrics of these songs for which I think the band has been criticised (as well as for its small degree of musical plundering) but I quite enjoy these new constructions from old materials. And Meloy's distinctive voice. Some of the songs are political but as always happens its when the personal seeps into a song that it becomes both simple and touching as in this song about the birth of his son.

Now in spite of the aforementioned potential crush, Meloy is no matinee idol. Johnny Flynn could be or well at the very least he needs to be put in a period film fast.

Flynn’s songs are also clearly influenced by British and American folk songs. His songs are also hyperliterate but unlike the Decemberists he is far more reflective and perhaps far more elegant in the construction of his verse. One of the reviews on the singer touched on his possibly being the best songwriter of his generation and this may well be true, I can't think of any other singer I have liked as much as Nick Drake. He is nowhere as well known as Mumford & Sons and Marling, perhaps his songs are not as accessible. Also they seem to be primarily poetry. And there do seem to be a few of his poems around, like this one. 

And keeping with the old timey theme, I have also been reading tweets of old sporadically and amusing myself. "Several at this place are becoming attached to the outside world by having telephones put in their houses" - indeed!

And last, it’s been ages since I bothered with the foreign Oscar winners. Too many seem intended for a bourgeois audience who can congratulate themselves on their good taste. I had Babette’s Feast somewhere in my chest of DVDs (!!) but dug it out just this Friday. Based on an Isak Dinensen story, it turned out to be both old timey and unexpectedly good. Maybe the slowness, the philosophical nature of the film was a welcome respite after a long week.

In a Forest

In the woods we return to reason and faith - R.W. Emerson

Several years ago in the midst of a fractious, deeply unhappy love affair I took a trip to Saputara. It was ostensibly an effort to recapture some of the initial spark of the affair though truth be told it was clear it was not going to happen. Still, P and I packed for the week and my trusted Maruti 800 was put into service with the two of us alternating the driving.

Driving clears one’s head. So does any movement, we think often of getting into a bus to no particular destination.   Already leaving Mumbai, the air felt a bit clearer in more ways than one.  We stopped for fresh fish and sweet tea at a shack by a lake.  Then on to Nasik where P had worked for awhile in a factory. We walked around a bit, the lanes were flanked by fields, the moon shone down.  We took a tour of the factory, oddly enough the cool gleam of the machines on a night shift was the beginning of some peace between us.

The Mumbai-Nasik road is a thoroughfare.  There are trucks, cars, small towns, people on the move, the flow of commerce.  Pulling away from Nasik things change.  The roads are not as busy, the countryside full of vineyards.  The rainy season had just ended leaving everything verdant.  One could sleep on an arm resting on the window, feel the sun on one’s face.  We expected  Saputara to be some distance after we passed Gujarat but suddenly it was upon us.  A hill station of sorts, this was the off season and the hotels lay empty.  Most were ordinary and built for a predominantly Gujarati  clientele, the staff a motley lot who had hotel degrees from small towns.  We initially checked into one of these till P, ever intrepid, found a picturesque State tourist cottage on a cliff.  On this we agreed,  its rusticity, its lack of conveniences. 

Time passed slowly, amicably.  The usual help ferried up the toast-tea-oily omelet breakfasts of government circuit houses. We walked around the quiet town, ate at the few hotels.  One night we heard singing from a village down below the cliff side.  Ahead of Saputara stretched the Dangs, the songs were tribal.   The next day we took the car into the forests.  Forests in a manner of speaking, for there was a road, small vehicles, tiny hamlets.  Still, the roads passed trees filled with sunlight, rivers in which women and children swam, all around a different world to the one we had left.  We drove up to Ahwa, which for a district headquarters was fairly pitiful,  largely because the Dangs was tribal, neglected, poor.   At the midday hour when we arrived, the streets were full of children in uniforms.  The politics of the Dangs was evident in Ahwa, not long back the district had been embroiled in clashes.  It wasn’t just the clashes.  We had stopped by a river only to step on broken beer bottles.  And not far from where we stopped, a few men, possibly small time businessmen from elsewhere, had set up an alcohol party.  Their spot commanded a view of the river, no doubt to better spot the near naked tribal women who swam there.  In the town, we went to see an Ayurvedic centre where medicines were being packed.  The man in charge had come from up north; he took it upon himself to explain the “loose morals” of the locals.  It appeared alcohol flowed freely, women frequently left their partners.  To us he had every appearance of having a mistress of his own.

So we wandered, mellowed and more friendly than we had been in the past months. At a botanical garden with neat hand painted signs identifying species, the trees loomed over us.  A sign informed us of a village with an inhabitant who had been to the Festival of India, we went in and bought a few pieces made of the local bamboo.  The man patiently fixed the horns of the deer while we sat and watched.  The deer seemed alive, their grace somehow captured in that piece of wood. The village was neat, small houses, small lots with greens.  Then the drive back in darkness, the faint snatches of song from the valley.  Then the hilltop cottage, alone and mysterious in the night light. 

Some days later we drove back.  Driving to the Dangs, we had imperceptibly slipped into a different way of life.  Returning felt different. By the time we hit Mumbai and stopped at a local café to eat, the shock of immersion in what was our life was disorienting.  I went home to meet my uncle who had taken ill, P flew back to tackle his own demons.  By the end of the year, my life felt unravelled and it would take more than a few months and a move to another continent to put it all back together again. It was not a happy time, it was not a time of reason or calm, it was not an admirable time.

For a long time I used to think of the Dangs. Not as a brief romantic interlude though it was that.  I am drawn to forests and hills, to mists and cold, to houses on cliffs.  To deer, to the whirling of birds in skies.  The closed nature of hill people, the grubby faces of their children.  To rivers, to women who freely revel in its waters.  I used to close my eyes and think for the longest time of how little all this was present in my life.

Making Things

There was rain predicted for the weekend but it turned out to be sunny, if a little cool.

My craft skills are amateurish but I like making something or the other, I suppose it is relaxing in the way some people may find cooking or playing a game to be a restful hobby.  My earliest memory of making something was my mother, brother and me making cards for his birthday party when he was 6 or 7. My mother had found an old book with sweet animal illustrations which we used to make the invitation cards.  I still make my own cards.

Most things I make happen serendipitously.  I find things when walking or something may catch my attention in the shops and I pile them up in boxes and then just put them together when I am making something.  The pieces above were found over several years in different places, the felt background was a little dyeing experiment.  I am undecided on whether to leave it as cards or to frame them.

 

Left over fabric scraps are part of the beginnings of the tee shirt above that I started this weekend - I don't know yet how it will go though I might be painting a bit on the hem when I have the time.  The jewellery purse below it is complete, its a shoulder pad from an 80s dress. I have been putting these to many uses and I fear I may soon be buying dresses for the pads.  The brass bit was a lost earring I found on the street. I quite like how it all came speedily together. 

I pretty much use the same approach with the house.  My brother and I have never really planned the look of any place we have lived in, we rely on an inner aesthetic coherence when we acquire (or retain) things piece meal.  Neither does it follow any particular order, I like propping up paintings on the floor.  By and large most places we have lived in have had an organic and folksy element with a definite pop of colour.  I like to bring the outdoors in a little bit and that frond must be the largest thing I ever carried in.